Sanctuary

Sanctuary
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Menagerie
Illustrator(s)	Claus Stephan
Card text
+1 Card +1 Action +1 Buy You may Exile a card from your hand.

Sanctuary is an Action card from Menagerie. It provides cantrip +Buy and lets you Exile a card.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• Exiling a card is optional.

Strategy

Sanctuary is a powerful card that combines a useful deck control effect with an additional Buy, both of which promote engine-building. As a cantrip, it doesn’t get in the way of other cards, and multiple copies can be played easily.

Generating to buy an early Sanctuary is often a priority so that you can start Exiling your junk cards. In the early game, the fact that it’s a cantrip whose thinning effect is optional is particularly useful, as it gives you more cycling and a larger hand size than many other trashers, often allowing you to hit slightly higher pricepoints. Depending on the Kingdom (e.g. the nature of the payload and draw, the strength of the competition at , and the presence or absence of other sources of gains), another Sanctuary is likely to become useful in the mid-game and adding more copies than that may not be unreasonable.

The fact that Exiling your Estates rather than trashing them allows you to keep your starting   isn’t usually important. This means that it’s unlikely to be worth skipping a fast trasher such as Chapel in the hope of being able to Sanctuary your Estates away instead, and it may not be worth choosing Sanctuary in the early game over a trasher with a better benefit than its effective 1 , such as the from Junk Dealer. However, the ability to remove more valuable Victory cards from your drawable deck while keeping the   has a much more significant impact. Like other Exilers, Sanctuary can encourage earlier and more gradual greening than usual — especially because it also makes +Buy relatively easy to come by, which opens up the possibility of beginning to accumulate   while continuing to ramp up payload. A minimal golden deck (e.g. Sanctuary, two Golds and a Silver to Exile a Province and gain another every turn) is technically possible, but is not usually the best available strategy, because Kingdoms with Sanctuary tend to offer the option of building to gain much more than 6  per turn. However, a smoothly-running engine with Sanctuary is often functionally close to a larger golden deck in the late game, Exiling as many Victory cards as it adds each turn.

As a cantrip providing +Buy, Sanctuary synergises well with cost reduction, as you can easily accumulate multiple Buys to take advantage of the reduced costs. Sanctuary’s presence in a Kingdom also guarantees some degree of deck control, which many providers of cost reduction such as Highway appreciate.

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		+1 Card +1 Action +1 Buy You may Exile a card from your hand.	Menagerie	March 2020

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Dutch	Gewijde Plek			+1 Kaart +1 Actie +1 Aanschaf Je mag een kaart uit je hand verbannen.	(2020)
German	Zufluchtsort			+1 Karte +1 Aktion +1 Kauf Du darfst eine deiner Handkarten verbannen.	(2020)
Japanese	聖域 (pron. sēiki)
Polish	Sanktuarium				Although Polish version is not released, this name is referred to in Polish Dominion 2E rulebook.

Trivia

Official card art.

Secret History

The initial premise was to have a way to exile cards that could also get cards out of exile. There were multiple versions and well. You don't want to exile good cards. If you can exile junk you will sure do that instead. It never really gave me a good "I'm saving a card for later" feeling. Some versions rewarded you for taking a card back by being a village; some players complained about these ones being disjointed messes. Plus it's not great that it hoses the exiling attacks. I stripped it down to a pure exiler, then gave it +1 Buy, and well there it is.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Menagerie

Relevant outtakes

The cards that tried to save cards for later in Exile included one suggested by Matt, that seeded Exile with something and always made you swap. Initially it was Silver but that was nuts; then it was Copper and well, did I mention you don't really want to put your good cards into Exile for later? You just don't.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of Dominion: Menagerie

Why is exiling optional?

There's no special story here; it was trying to be good enough. Junk Dealer makes +; for a bunch of the game, that's pretty relevant, and exiling Provinces isn't.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Interview with Donald X.